The skinny on Texas' big deer season

Published 7:00 am, Saturday, November 3, 2012

WELCOMED WINTER WETNESS - Recent rain in much of drought-withered South Texas will trigger a spurt of forb production, greatly help deer such as this doe and her buck fawn.

WELCOMED WINTER WETNESS - Recent rain in much of drought-withered South Texas will trigger a spurt of forb production, greatly help deer such as this doe and her buck fawn.

Photo: Shannon Tompkins, Doe And Yearling

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LOOKING GOOD - Adult deer in much of Texas managed to maintain good body condition despite the habitat-damaging effects of a year-long drought.

LOOKING GOOD - Adult deer in much of Texas managed to maintain good body condition despite the habitat-damaging effects of a year-long drought.

Photo: Shannon Tompkins, South Texas Buck

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POTENTIAL FOR GROWTH ? Good range conditions have returned to most of Texas after a two-year siege of drought. Abundant forage, particularly forbs and other ?weedy? plants high in nutrients and minerals, should improve antler development in most buck deer. less

POTENTIAL FOR GROWTH ? Good range conditions have returned to most of Texas after a two-year siege of drought. Abundant forage, particularly forbs and other ?weedy? plants high in nutrients and minerals, should ... more

Photo: Shannon Tompkins

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TOO YOUNG - In Texas counties under antler restriction regulations, this young buck would not be legal game - it has forked antlers but not a minimum 13-inch inside antler spread. The object of the regulation is to protect most young buck deer until they are at least 3 years old or older. Deer season opened Saturday. Shannon Tompkins/Houston Chronicle less

TOO YOUNG - In Texas counties under antler restriction regulations, this young buck would not be legal game - it has forked antlers but not a minimum 13-inch inside antler spread. The object of the regulation ... more

Photo: Shannon Tompkins, Staff

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In a few weeks, Southeast Texas deer will enter their breeding when deer-vehicle collsions are most likey to happen. The peak month for deer-vehicle collisions is November, according to the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety. AP Photo less

In a few weeks, Southeast Texas deer will enter their breeding when deer-vehicle collsions are most likey to happen. The peak month for deer-vehicle collisions is November, according to the Insurance Institute ... more

Photo: Tony Dejak, STF

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TOO YOUNG ñ In Texas counties under antler restriction regulations, this young buck would not be legal game ñ it has forked antlers but not a minimum 13-inch inside antler spread. The object of the regulation is to protect most young buck deer until they are at least 3 years old or older. less

TOO YOUNG ñ In Texas counties under antler restriction regulations, this young buck would not be legal game ñ it has forked antlers but not a minimum 13-inch inside antler spread. The object of the regulation ... more

Photo: Shannon Tompkins

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ON THE MOVE - South Texas deer hunters can expect to see much improved deer movement over the next couple of weeks as the annual breeding season kicks into high gear and bucks spend much of their time looking for receptive does. less

ON THE MOVE - South Texas deer hunters can expect to see much improved deer movement over the next couple of weeks as the annual breeding season kicks into high gear and bucks spend much of their time looking ... more

Photo: Shannon Tompkins, Whitetail Buck

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The skinny on Texas' big deer season

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Texas' white-tailed deer have enjoyed a pretty good year in 2012, and so will Texas' deer hunters.

But many of the 700,000 or so deer hunters heading afield during the early days of the 2012-13 general white-tailed deer hunting season that opens today, statewide, might have to spend a little more time afield or try some different tactics if they want to be successful on opening weekend.

"The good news is, it looks like a Luby's buffet for deer out there," said Macy Ledbetter, a veteran private-practice wildlife biologist whose business, Whitetail Domains, works on scores of ranches across the western two-thirds of Texas. "You've got vegetation that has just exploded, oaks dropping a bumper crop of acorns, loaded persimmon trees in the Hill County. In a lot of Texas, a deer doesn't have to move very far to find plenty to eat.

"This is very, very good for deer and not so good for those deer hunters who just watch a corn feeder. Right now, there's almost no need for a deer to come to a feeder except out of habit," Ledbetter said.

"In a lot of the state, there's so much food for deer to eat that they aren't hitting feeders - at least not yet," said Cain, deer program leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's wildlife division.

"There's a lot of groceries on the ground - a huge acorn crop and a tremendous soft mast crop," said Gary Calkins, TPWD district biologist for the Pineywoods ecological region. "The woods are purple with beautyberry.

"The reports I'm hearing from folks who are checking their trail cameras is that there's not a lot of traffic around feeders. But deer are really hitting the acorns and the soft mast," Calkins said. "I believe it. I was in the woods over the weekend, and I stopped at a big swamp chestnut oak that was dropping acorns. The ground was tore up with tracks - it was busier than a Walmart parking lot."

Change in plans

Instead of sitting in a box stand overlooking a feeder or food plot, deer hunters might see more deer if they use a portable stand to set up along a deer travel corridor or in a creek or river bottom holding oaks dropping acorns.

The deer that hunters do see almost certainly will be in better physical condition than they were at this time a year ago, and there will be more of them.

Going into the 2011 deer season, Texas had broiled and withered under record-setting drought and heat that resulted in one of the poorest fawn crops in decades, poor survival of fawns that did hit the ground, scattered die-offs of adult deer in some areas, and poor body condition of deer because of a lack of forage.

"As for last year, I'm not sure 'horrid' covers it. It was as bad as most of us have ever seen," Calkins said of the drought's impact on the landscape and the wildlife living on it.

"There was nothing on the ground - no grass, no cover," Ledbetter said. "It looked like a parking lot."

That changed late this past winter when rain came back to much of Texas, triggering an explosion of vegetation, including the forbs and browse that fuel whitetails and the grasses that provide cover for fawns born during summer.

"The rains we got in January and February set the stage, and the rains we've had since them have really helped turn things around in a lot of the state," Cain said.

Late-summer rains in part of the state, especially South Texas, have triggered a late flush of forage that should take deer into winter in great shape.

"Vegetation is in overdrive right now," Ledbetter said of much of South Texas. "Plants seem to think it's spring. That's really going to help deer."

Fawn production

In an average year on typical deer range in Texas, 25-50 percent of deer fawns will survive into autumn.

In 2011, fawn production and survival was abysmal. Ledbetter, who conducts aerial deer surveys on dozens of properties, said he surveyed four ranches where fawn survival was "zero" in 2011.

"I'd never see that before. And there were bunches of places where the percentage of fawn survival was in the single digits," he said.

This year, the fawn crop is "all over the map," Ledbetter said. On properties where landowners practiced good management - not overgrazing during the drought, managing water resources, reducing deer numbers to fit available habitat, etc. - fawn survival this year has been as high as 75 percent, he said. On average deer range, fawn survival has been 25-45 percent.

"I'd say this year is a tick or two above average overall," Ledbetter said of Texas' deer herd and the habitat supporting it. "There are still some places that are awfully dry and where there hasn't been as strong a recovery - Jim Hogg County and deep in the (Rio Grande) Valley are still struggling. But most places have seen a gigantic improvement over last year."

That's manifested in the body condition of the deer.

"Deer are generally in great shape physically, and I'd expect antler development to be average or above average in most of the state," Cain said.

Universally, reports of the body condition and antler quality of deer taken during the October archery season and on many of the 7,000 or so properties under the state's Managed Lands Deer Program, which allows use of firearms for taking whitetails from October through February, have supported what wildlife managers have observed in the field.

Optimism abounds

This past week, on an MLDP property to which the owner had invited a group of military veterans to hunt, seven deer were taken, Ledbetter said. The bucks, which ranged from 2 to 6 years old, "were just rolling in fat," he said. Only one of the seven - a doe - was in what Ledbetter classed as "just marginally good shape."

Even more encouraging for Texas hunters, deer processing businesses report plenty of cause for optimism about the coming general hunting season. Most have seen increases in the number and quality of deer taken by bow hunters and those hunting MLDP properties.

"This past year, with the drought, we were down somewhere between 10 and 20 percent in the number of deer we took in," said Marcus Poffenberger of Bellville Meat Market in Austin County. "This year, through the first two weeks of bow season, we're up 50 percent, and the deer are in great condition.